‘Afterimage’ engages with art photography, approaching the ‘problem of picturing’ by negating the image and picture plane to interrupt the spectatorship of the viewing subject. To destroy images without naming them directs attention beyond or outside the image, to a specific aspect of the conditions of production and reception: the practice of mounting photographs on aluminium as an ‘art world’ convention.

So ‘Afterimage’ makes explicit the links between aluminium as a substrate and the network of structures supporting the ‘art world’ and connecting it to the economy. These range from the physical architecture of the gallery to the global transport infrastructure, and the systems of producing value through critical acclaim and commercial success.

The link between value and scarcity is socially produced. The number of our photographs that we could destroy was limited by the moment in time when the idea was recognized. Aluminium as an element suggests purity, yet its ubiquity makes it banal, dispersing attention from its nature as a profligate material loaded with ecological debt and social injustice.

While ‘Afterimage’ embodies its own complicity in destruction-as-production, it also proposes that accepting material limits and the irreversible nature of certain decisions allows for transformation from one state to another.